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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   4186 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 3, 2026

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Grand Theft Crypto, Episode LXXVI

New week is here, time for new culture war happening is here. Maybe it belongs to finance thread, but both cryptocurrency and cryptocrime are now inseparable part of our culture.

Coldcard Hardware Wallet Flaw Linked to $70 Million Bitcoin Theft in 41 Minutes

An attacker drained 1,196 Bitcoin addresses in 41 minutes on July 30, taking 1,082.65 BTC worth about $70.2 million at the time.

Yes, safe crypto technology had proven to be unsafe once again. Follow the links in the article for more nerd details.

Why is this important? This time, this not due any fault or slip at the user side - their only mistake was trusting the professionals of Coinkite business operating since 2013 and considered one of the best by everyone in crypto.

Bitcoin is not to blame, Bitcoin worked as intended. The random numbers generated by Coldcard were not random.

Little parable for non nerds to grok what is it all about:

You have big pot of gold, and are very afraid you will lose it. Where to hide your treasure? You want to stay anonymous, you do not want anyone ever know that you are a rich man.

Fortunately, your bank provides deposit boxes, fully anonymous where anyone with key can come and withdraw the deposit, no questions asked.

Now, you have problem where to hide the key, so you do not lose or misplace it. No worry, you buy safe, made by trustworthy long established manufacturer that is 100% secure from crackers. You put your key inside, and feel relieved.

Until one day, you find the safe empty, the key vanished. You hurry to bank in panic, and your greatest fears come true. Someone was there, and emptied your deposit box. Your treasure is gone.

What happened? The super secure safe was unsafe. There was manufacturing fault that enabled anyone to open it if he knew about it. Some criminal mastermind learned about the vulnerability (For more mastermind points, he worked in the safe manufacturing company and put the fault there himself. For maximal mastermind points, he founded and operated the company himself, in a proper long con.) sneaked to your safe and squirreled away the key.

If your rage is pointed at bank, it is misplaced. Rightful target of your rage is the thief (good luck finding him, the chap can be now in Uruguay, Uganda or Uzbekistan, the world is big) and the safe company (good luck recovering anything from them). Just say farewell to your wealth and learn to love the hobo life.

Now, what are lessons of the episode?

1/ Another proof that crypto hadn't brought world peace and harmony as some more devoted fans promised, but crypto made crime cool again. Grisly, retarded and boring ordinary everyday crime stays, but evil genius was conjured from pages of pulp novels to reality.

2/ Trust no one. If you want to make you crypto stash really secure, you need to make your own random number generator, this means using the gold standard of physics, radioactive decay. No randomer random events can be found in this universe.

Too much work? Say good bye to crypto and invest in white powder. What you put in your nose, no one can take away from you ever again.

edit: links

1/ Another proof that crypto hadn't brought world peace and harmony as some more devoted fans promised, but crypto made crime cool again.

I disagree with both extremes. Crypto is just a tool, one that can be used for good or evil depending on the people who interact with it. The first bank robbery probably happened 15 minutes after the first bank opened. The first bank also brought immense benefits to society. Crypto is no different.

2/ Trust no one. If you want to make you crypto stash really secure, you need to make your own random number generator, this means using the gold standard of physics, radioactive decay. No randomer random events can be found in this universe.

You still have to trust that you or the code you run didn't mishandle the numbers or cause them to lose entropy somewhere. You still have to trust something, on some level. Trusting nothing is impossible. However, I do agree with the principle that you should trust the least amount of things possible. Generating your own numbers (if done correctly) may be such a solution if you suspect the built-in RNG is dodgy.

And using radioactive decay is excessive and unnecessary. The real problem is that they rolled their own crypto.

I disagree with both extremes. Crypto is just a tool, one that can be used for good or evil depending on the people who interact with it. The first bank robbery probably happened 15 minutes after the first bank opened.

Not the same thing, bank robberies today tend to be rather primitive affairs, rarely successful (with rare exceptions).

And robbing bank from the inside requires decades of grind and hard work (and good connections) before you are promoted to position where you can squirrel away the dough.

Crypto crime is career open to anyone in the world with internet access, the ultimate meritocracy.

I fear that you may have sampling bias with regards to crypto. You don't hear about the failed crypto thefts, only the successful ones. Successful theft of crypto requires some degree of intelligence and hard work, much like successful theft from bank. Not just anybody with Internet access can do it.

(I should be clear that by successful, I am also including getting away with it without being caught or facing significant punishment. I will grant that crypto theft in certain respects is easier than, for example, breaking into a bank, but unless you have perfect ironclad opsec you can't just steal money and get away with it.)

Also laundering large sums of crypto is a gigantic pain in the ass compared to most other assets since it's all public on the blockchain. North Korea isn't bad at it since they've got a very long time horizon to slowly drip the money out through certain protocols, but if you're the average hacker on the block and you manage to grab 200M off an exploit you're going to struggle to get much of that into spending money.

And using radioactive decay is excessive and unnecessary.

There are very real concerns about even seemingly-good sources of hardware randomness. There remain reasons why Linux maintains CONFIG_RANDOM_TRUST_CPU: if your concern is nation-state level actors, you might not trust Intel's pinky swear that the random bits it generated have nothing up its sleeve (see DUAL_EC_DRBG for the sorts of concerns you'd want to be aware of).

Radioactive decay is at least something you can build relatively easily that has no obvious metaphorical sleeves to hide weaknesses. But you're probably right it's overkill for most users.

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